ABSTRACT
Militant Islam did not develop ex nihilo. There is common ground between the Muslim Brothers, believed by many Egyptian intellectuals and foreign scholars to be a relatively moderate movement, and the Islamic jihad movements. All believe that the only solution to the problems of Egypt and the Muslim world is the establishment of an Islamic Shari‘a state to be headed by a caliph who will run the affairs of state in the spirit of the Quran, the Sunna, and early Islam. All these movements — the Muslim Brothers and the militant jihad organizations — totally reject the idea of any other form of rule. The governments that currently exist — those which gained power by democratic means and those, following a coup d'état or revolution — are, in their view, the governments of infidels and should be replaced by an Islamic Shari‘a state. The only question asked by both the Muslim Brothers and the militant organizations that demand an Islamic state at once, is how to go about changing the government.
